Friday, 30 September 2016

Among the admittedly few bloggers who take notice of my comments, I have quite often been accused of not being a real reactionary; as if this was something I claimed to be, and an accusation I might be assumed to dispute...

Although wrong, this is not all that surprising, because several years ago I did go through a period when I did consider myself a reactionary; and this period included writing my book Thought Prison, and it was at this blog that the Orthosphere was devised and named (mainly by Kristor Lawson) - but it is now quite a while (probably about four years) since I was a part of this movement, or had reactionary aspirations - by which I mean the primary hope or intention of returning society to some earlier phase.

On the contrary, I believe we are in the End Times, the Letter Days - that these times are unique and that the 'destiny' (in the sense of the proper, best, intended future) is therefore qualitatively unlike any era of the past.

Part of this attitude is repulsion, part is attraction. Repulsion is that - when I try empathically to identify with any actual society of the past I find it impossible to yearn for it. There are aspects and phases - sometimes short transitional eras - that I do yearn for: some aspects of Neolithic society, of Anglo Saxon Northumbria in the Golden Age, participating in the Divine Liturgy at the Hagia Sophia during the height of the Byzantine Empire, that brief and lovely flowering of the Church of England around the time of Thomas Traherne... little bits and glimpses; but never the whole package.

In particular, I do not want anything on the lines of medieval Europe in the Age of Faith; which seems to be the staple yearning of most reactionaries (either that, or Holy Russia - which I do find preferable; or some kind of puritan commonwealth...). While there is much to admire (I read a lot of Chaucer and his contemporaries, I regard the Gothic Cathedrals as the most beautiful of all buildings) overall I don't much like the idea of Catholic Europe in the way that Chesterton and Belloc painted it. I have tried to make myself, at times; but really I don't. My aversion is solid.

In sum, I cannot regard any previously existing Christian society or type of Christianity as what was wanted or intended - all had good qualities, but all were very deeply and profoundly flawed (not always from their own fault - but usually so). In sum, I am not a traditionalist in any overall sense, nor in any sense which would enable me to point an any actual society and say that was how it was meant to be; that is what Christ intended for us.

I presume a real reactionary must be able to do this, must be able to regard some previous state of affairs as pretty-much ideal, given the constraints (although reactionaries differ greatly among themselves as to what 'that' actually is) but I cannot and do not want to be able to do tit: I am not and do not want to be a reactionary!

Not that I like these times and their trends - they are awful. I am on record of saying on multiple occasions that nowadays in the West seems to be the most evil time and place in human history - the only time when an increasingly systematic inverted morality (good as evil, evil as good) has been officially promoted and enforced in a sustained fashion.

But I am convinced we need to go through these times and out the other side; not back. My diagnosis is that we are stuck in rebellious adolescence - but the adolescence was both necessary and good - the problem was getting stuck for 200 plus years in what was meant to be a short transitional phase leading to a grown up Christianity of a type we never yet have seen.

So I am not a reactionary - I am future orientated. What I would most want is a Christian society, a theocracy - but of a type and nature as yet unseen and unknown (except in glimpses). This would - presumably - delay The End (which seems to be what God wants - he wants this world to last as long as possible, as long as it does good for salvation and theosis) ; but of course in the fullness of time the end will come; and will need to come. But that is God's business, and not even Jesus knew the timing.

But I regard all previous and existing forms of Christian life as flawed and or stunted; i particular most serious churches are currently severely limited, stunted and distorted by continually having to fight the sexual revolution (they have to do this, it is necessary that they do this, I support them doing this - but the fact is that it takes a serious toll on what is possible for Christian churches in our era).

My answer is that they fail to take account of the primary assumptions of God being creator, wholly-good and our wholly-loving Father.

It seems clear to me that many or most Christians - past and present - do not really believe these assumptions - becausse their world picture is grossly incompatible with them. But why do they not (really) believe the primary assumptions?

In the first place such assumptions can only be known by individuals, and by direct-knowledge, intuition, faith. There are no real 'arguments', no 'evidence' to support the idea that God is creator and loving Father - either you know this, or you don't.

Perhaps you don't know it because you have never asked the question - or you may know it but doubt the validity of this kind of knowledge (and need to alter your metaphysical understanding) ... Many billions of religious people who believe in a creator-God have not been able to feel or acknowledge that God is truly a personage - but instead they have an abstract view of God (as like a 'force' or described by abstract properties such as 'omnipotence'). For them God is a creator of total power, but they don't really know anything about God, cannot be sure of his nature and motivations - and therefore cannot infer anything about the world. They might believe in a monstrously horrific human situation - and yet not be sure that this is incompatible with a creator that is good, loving, our Father because the regard goodness, lovingness and Fatherhood as merely abstract metaphors; un-interpretable and not directly applicable to 'real life'.

Others believe in God's complete goodness, but their God not the creator - so their God has very limited power to set-up the world. The world might be set-up as a horrible place of torment, maybe even made or run by evil entities...

However, my point here is that Christians (supposedly) personally, fundamentally believe that God is wholly good, the creator and our Father (that is, intimately concerned with us, his children; and concerned that we grow up and grow up well). All of these.

And yet in actuality many/ most of these Christians have a concept of the human condition as one that ought to be lived in constant and dread-full awareness of the proximity of eternal torment in Hell as the natural, just and default end to mortal life. (Their primary argument is Believe or else. It is the fear of 'or else' which compels belief, not the positive consequences of Christianity. For them; Christ came to save us from a world set-up such that we were destined for eternal torture - that is the 'good' news.)

All this is bound up with notions of The Fall and Original Sin which are abstracted-from/ Imputed to the Bible - yet are far from clear in the Gospels. Why have they become so central, so indisputable, to so many people?

The short answer is that not many people have ever really believed that God is our good, creator Father.

Think about our own earthly Father or Mother - as a child, if we believe they are good, we trust them; and we interpret their actions (observed and imputed) in that light - in the light of knowing that they love us.

We don't let any specific action, or their average of actions, or anything we read, or anything which 'other people' say, have any influence AT ALL on the knowledge of the fact that they love us.

So the mass of Christians do not assume the loving goodness of God, they de facto test it. For example, they test the gooodness of God by reading the Bible, or Church pronouncements. This is equivalent to a child starting each day agnostic as to the love of his parents, and weighing all their actions and statements about them to decide - day by day, moment by moment - whether his parents reallydo love him - or not.

The fact is, such a child could never reach a conclusion, because it is formally impossible to test whether somebody loves you or does not; whether they are good or not. These are matters of assumption - hence of direct knowledge (or if there is no direct knowledge then they are not known).

This is the craziness of trying to learn about the nature of God by reading the Bible, or reading the Church Fathers, or reading the documents of the church. By doing so we have already, implicitly, mistrusted God, put God on trial; have decided that God is NOT (not really ) our Heavenly Father and creator.

We are relying upon our fallible interpretation of fallible texts for our understanding of the fundamental nature of God and reality! - little wonder that nothing or nonsense are the typical consequences!

Little surprise that - at the end of such - such common - activities, people end up with a view of Christianity that is - at its most basic level - inverted. To focus on Hell instead of Heaven, to impute a Fall and original sin as the primary and focal points of the human condition... this is crazy stuff to anyone who really believes that God the creator set-up this world and that God loves us as a Heavenly Father and is wholly good - because such a one would obviously not have made such a world.

Thursday, 29 September 2016

At the end of Avalonian Quest, an insightful book on Glastonbury as a phenomenon, Geoffrey Ashe closed with some wise words on what was needed (cica 1982) for there to be a spiritual awakening. 34 years on, it has not yet happened - but his words remain true:

I have a thing which I recognise as poetry - I can point at the passages where it occurs; and this thing is seldom found. Most 'poets' never once achieve it, and among the true poets, it is only ever to be found occasionaly or intermittently (and of some, I cannot decide).

But poetry in prose can happen too. How may it be defined? Well, most prose - almost all prose - is about things; but poetic prose is the thing itself: poetic prose is that which it describes.

Many writers strive for, or contrive to, impersonate poetic prose, by rhetorical tricks. And they may 'fool' us for a while (and the prose writers may also fool themselves that they have actually achieved poetry); but genuinely poetic prose is far beyond most prose writers, and repeated reading will reveal this, if it is allowed to.

The main repository of poetic prose in the English Language is in the Authorised ('King James') Version of the Bible. And there is also some in Shakespeare's plays. From the next generation, the 'Centuries' of Thomas Traherne stand-out. In the modern era, if we compare CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien; it seems clear to me that Lewis never writes poetic prose, but Tolkien sometimes does.

Interestingly. I first became aware of the distinction between poetry and prose in the prose writings of Roberts Graves (such as The White Goddess) - yet Graves's own prose is always prosaic (superb in quality, but always 'about' - never 'it' - and indeed the same applies to his verse: it never rises to real poetry (although Grave's himself hotly asserted otherwise).

My understanding is that real poetry, whether found in verse or in prose, is rare, intermittent, uncontrollable, and only somewhat related to overall literary quality (some genuine poetry is found among minor poets like WH Davies or Walter de la Mare, while absent from major writers like WH Auden or TS Eliot).

We live on prose, it is our bread-and-butter - our staple diet - but poetry is there if we are open to it. What poetry 'does' is hard to say; mostly it points to the sheer possibility of itself - of language also being what language is about. A world where people communicated in poetry rather than prose would certainly be a better place!

Wednesday, 28 September 2016

1. The most solid knowledge - that is, least prone to error, external influence and wishful thinking - is that which comes to us spontaneously, unsought.

In other words, this is the imaginative knowledge that comes-into the mind without mediation either by five senses' information or of reasoning. It 'appears' - it is 'just there' - and we know it by intuition (of course, summarising and explaining imagination are extra, and fallible, processes).

2. By purposive concentration on a theme or question.

This knowledge is more prone to error, wishful thinking etc. What tends to guard against this is when we allow ourselves to 'brood' patiently on matters, without a deadline or sense of urgency.

This patient brooding allows the proper question to become clear, as well as the answer - because asking too-narrow a question is to introduce un-noticed assumptions that may not be correct.

Patient brooding is the proper way to fill gaps in our knowledge, or deal with personally vital questions.

3. Imagination becomes error prone when it is used against a short timeline to answer questions that we are not personally engaged by - when used to answer 'idle curiosity' or externally-originating commissions.

*

Note: This is where I think Rudolf Steiner went wrong in his later career as a clairvoyant: that is he used his imaginative ability urgently (against a deadline, such as a projected lecture course) to seek detailed answers to questions that were not of primary concern to him; and also questions which came from other people.

Biographers agree that much or most of Steiner's later work (including the vastly detailed historical material, training methods for doing Spiritual Science, work on medicine, agriculture, education etc.) was done in response to an external agenda.

In addition, the vast number of lectures he gave, from 1904 more than 150 increasing to more than 400 lectures per year - I believe led him to 'force' answers using a standardised psychological 'technique'.

Steiner came to believe that answers to anything and everything were to be had, instantly, and for the asking... These were then 'automatically' systematised - quite naturally for him, using his vast intelligence and memory, into the trained 'German Professorial' form in which they were recorded.

This is my explanation as to why the great bulk of Steiner's output is wrong, irrelevant and off-putting - but nonetheless (and especially the early material, but intermittently through his life) he also produced basic and essential insights and knowledge.

(Note: an older division, before the development of Science as a separate domain, combined Rational and Empirical as Natural Philosophy

The above hierarchy is, I think, the only coherent set of metaphysical assumptions for arranging these types of knowledge - in the sense that 'facts' depend on reasoning, and reasoning is validated by intuition.

What, then, validates 'Imagination/ Intuition'? The further assumption of divine revelation - which needs to be both internal and external - we need to have something divine within in order to respond to divine revelations from without.

Once these assumptions, and this scheme, is in place - then everything necessary seems to follow.

Any other arrangement of the elements seems to be self-refuting.

Implications...
1. Imaginative knowledge can be tested by reasoning and observation (tested to some extent, although almost-never conclusively so) - but imaginative knowledge is primary.
2. Facts need to be tested by their coherence with other facts - i.e. by reasoning - and also and ultimately by imagination (although this imaginative test cannot be forced; the answer may come slowly or not at all; and at any cross-sectional point in time, intuition is likewise variable in validity and reliability).
3. Reasoning needs to be tested by imagination - since we are very prone to errors in reasoning, and correct reasoning is not fully and un-distortedly known in any explicit and reliably-transmissible fashion.

Monday, 26 September 2016

In an essay entitled 'God in the Dock', CS Lewis comments that the British working class men he lectured during the 1939-45 war were impervious to historical arguments: they did not really believe history, did not believe it was known or relevant.

On top of this, he mentions that discussions of the meaning of words created suspicion rather than clarity; and instant turn-off. I would add to this that for most people multi-step logical argument creates a mixture of boredom and hostility; people find it excruciatingly dull and suppose that they are being hoodwinked with verbal trickery.

I suspect that these negatives relating to history and logic are even more strongly and widely the case now, after 50 years of political correctness; so that arguments in favour of religion that depend on the validity and relevance of history are likely to be ineffective.

By contrast, looking at the relatively high continued effectiveness of evangelism from Pentecostal and Charismatic churches; I suspect that the approach to modern evangelism needs to be through personal revelation, direct spiritual experience, and the seeking of guidance by meditation (inner) and prayer (outer) communications.

On top of this: If there is a spiritual revival afoot or imminent, I think it will be fuelled by a revulsion against The System; and will therefore include a revulsion against both history and logic (which have long since been captured and perverted by The Establishment).

So. The path to revival...

1. The true path is intuition (but not instinct)

2. Seeking and gaining Revelations from the divine (but not 'what you will' and not 'gut instinct')

3. Anti-materialistic (not economic, not socialism in any form, not focused on worldly action)

4. Concrete - not abstract (again, because abstraction - like logic - has been captured by The System)

Then what should people actually do? (in a world where the old instructions are seldom possible - they cannot be asked to join a church, because probably that church will stop them being a Christian; they cannot be told to 'read the Bible', because that experience will probably also be counterproductive.

(But I might venture to suggest that someone read with care the Gospel of John in the King James Version, and then pray and meditate as to whether it is true. It might work. But there is really no 'method' either to prayer or meditation - so even such a simple instruction might be counterproductive.)

If Christian revival is to be more than something happening in people's head; people need to talk.

That is how I think a modern revival might be perceived - in terms of talk. People talking about spiritual and religious matters. Talking among husband and wife and in families, among friends; teachers, doctors, therapists being asked questions serious questions, and then being judged on the seriousness of their answers (and impatiently rejected if they are unable to respond, instantly and directly, with commensurate seriousness).

People in private, at work, in cafes or bars - having (or trying to have) serious talks about ultimate matters; impatiently shrugging-off the artificial and manipulative concerns of the mass media and the daily psychodramas and sexual strategising, the mind-numbing restrictions of political correctness.

And a reck-less-ness about all this - because it will need to overcome the inculcated fear to keep people on track and in line; supplemented by engineered crises, contrived states of 'emergency', persecutions disguised as philanthropy...

But all such matters thrust-aside with a single gesture as worldly system stuff...

Spiritual awakening therefore first evident in the form of Serious Talk.... Who will be able to respond, and feed the spiritual hunger?

Sunday, 25 September 2016

I think that computers and the internet may represent the biggest threat to humanity ever - the transhumanist nightmare - because people want them and they are addictive: a lethal combination (far more dangerous to the soul than coercion).

As the technology gets 'smart' so the actual people get dumber - and in a subtly deceptive way: they can (to an extent) fool other people by passing-off the external data as their own knowledge - as with cut-and-paste or memorise-and-parrot.

And modern evaluations are seldom able to tell the difference between personal knowledge and re-presented stuff (only human judgement in sustained interaction can do that - and such evaluations are deemed subjective hence personally-biased).

If we consider the cognitive psychological division of input-processing-output - then the input is already almost monopolised by the mass media; the current step is for more and more processing/ thinking to be done online (in 'the cloud') with humans as small scale participants.

When both input and processing are determined - then output - i.e. human behaviour - is also determined.

In other words if/ when the Establishment are controlling what goes into thinking, and if thinking is being done by programmable computers - then everything that happens will be controlled.

At present most people voluntarily carry smartphones and use them nearly all the time - the next step is to make them wearable - but this may be leapfrogged and the technology will become implanted into the body - for extra convenience, and because people are addicted to distraction and want never to be separated from their internet and social media access.

And of course once the technology is implanted it cannot be avoided - so by controlling input and processing then humans will (so the theory of cognitive psychology goes) be controlled by whoever, or whatever, controls the computers.

Will modern man mind about this; or will he continue to labour and queue and pay to be the first and get the latest and most controlling tech? Will there be campaigns, demonstrations and riots protesting that some people are excluded from the implant revolution? Quite likely - if things ever get that far.

On the positive side, cognitive psychology is just a model, certainly not the whole truth - so there are many factors left out of the input-processing-output description that are important; and control of input and processing will not (when it comes to it) fully control human behaviour.

Nonetheless the degree of success of the mass media control of input is striking; and when processing is added onto it - it is likely that humans will indeed become highly, if not completely, controllable.

Against this actually being achieved is the decline in human intelligence and creativity combined with the exclusion of intelligence and creativity from modern institutions; then there is the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the ever more pervasive bureaucracy (now constituting one massive, multi-system, linked bureaucracy) - which is further contaminated by endemic dishonesty.

And then there is the interdependence and fragility of the global system; self-paralysed increasingly by self-loathing and the covert wish for self-destruction and civilisational suicide.

Technological capability is already declining - and this may go so far and so fast as to prevent the transhumanist nightmare.

Like so many catastrophes - it is a race against time - and the only thing that stops it may need to be failure, rather than good sense or good morals.

Friday, 23 September 2016

It is hardly a surprise, but we are now three months after the Brexit vote and nothing has happened - zilch, zip, nada...

Lots has been said - but since all mainstream politicians are liars, then these words mean nothing - zilch, zip, nada...

We have an Anti-Brexit Prime Minister leading a group of Anti-Brexit or sell-out ministers, and all the parliamentary parties and all the British elite are Anti-Brexit... so it is unremarkable that they are working towards some change that is no change; some way that Britain can 'leave' the EU without actually leaving.

('Leaving' the EU but so that the elite corruption and bribes are intact, and so that the British subsidy of and subordination to the EU remains; and Britain remains securely on its partly driven/ partly suicidal downward-path to spiritual and cultural oblivion.)

So, what next?

If I am correct; then now that the large majority of English realise that the Establishment has no intention of giving them what they voted for; some-thing is about to happen which will, in some way, reveal (to those with eyes to see) that the British Establishment is systematically lying to the British people and has malign intentions towards them.

What this 'thing' will be, I do not know - no doubt it will come from some unexpected and unguarded direction - because we are now dealing with divine intervention, lining-things-up behind the scenes.

But (if I am correct) it will happen and we will know it when it has happened.

And what then? Well, that depends on how people choose after they know...

People will know, they will choose, and they will then have to live-with the consequences of their choice.

The bottom line of this insight is that within a Christian context the number one priority for modern Western Man is to expand and enhance consciousness such that we become aware of the spiritual world beyond the 'five senses', including the divinity of our fellow Men.

This enhanced consciousness aimed-at is not a matter of the kind of hallucinatory, dream or trance-state we associate with shamans and other mystics of former eras - but is to be achieved in and by lucid, alert and purposive thinking.

Overall, not so much about seeing new (and previously unseen) things, so much as seeing old things anew (see Arkle's painting above).

In other words, it is a particular kind of thinking which is to provide us with valid knowledge - but not just abstractly 'knowing about' stuff; but actual experience of the reality of knowledge.

(Why? My understanding is currently that there is a kind of thinking which is primary, spontaneous, and does not depend upon perception or any other kind of 'input' - and this comes form God-within-us, that which makes is children of God: and that is the reason why it is intrinsically valid thinking.)

The 64,000 dollar question is how do we do this? How do we raise our thinking to this level, and keep it there? Where do we even start on this task?

Having been reading Colin Wilson's Beyond the Occult recently, I think one general answer may be that we should start with any of the spiritual, paranormal or enhanced types of consciousness that we personally spontaneously experience. These go by many names, but could include peak experiences, synchronicity, self-remembering, clairvoyance, fore-sight, the sense of being transported to another time or place (what Wilson termed Faculty X)...

Or (especially) those 'magical' (or holiday) times of several or many minutes when we seem to be living inside a narrative or story or tableau, and in a state of awareness of connections and a providential unfolding...

In a nutshell, we can start with those moments or times when the ordinary and the everyday are felt to be meaningful, purposive and we are engaged by them.When this happens, we are inside the kind of thinking we are aiming-at, the kind of thinking we most need - these phenomena are (often) a sign that this is it.

That is the kind of thing we start-with, and what we need to remember, take seriously, and endeavour to build-upon.

Nothing we might do is more important - the task deserves our best efforts.

Of course, if one is hoping for some positive change in direction of The West, and the chance to step-off the down-escalator to mass damnation and cultural suicide... well, then all this is utterly irrelevant; since Trump and the Alt-Right are merely a part of the Leftist Media Establishment Fake Reality (they are on the same side, controlled by the same forces, as the Clinton/ Democrat Left and SJWs) - all of which we must see-through and repent before any positive change is possible.
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/what-do-i-think-about-alt-right-it-is.html
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NOTE: It might be wondered why I am attacking the sincerity, strength and value of the Secular/ Alt-Right yet again (and I have been doing so since 2010 when this blog started, including in Thought Prison which was written from this blog - http://thoughtprison-pc.blogspot.co.ukThe reason is that I believe (on mostly intuitive, rather than evidential, grounds) we are now in a time when there is a chance of genuine, existential change in The West - which would require us to dump secularism and take a path which is initially spiritual and eventually religious. Triumphalism over yet another pseudo-Right movement - based on the identical utilitarian and this-worldly bottom line as the mainstream Left - makes such a genuine change less likely. This is why I wish to point out the motivational feebleness and covertly self-seeking nature of the Alt-Right (etc) movement.

It is not that I regard reincarnation as impossible, rather that I believe it is probably very rare - and the reason I believe this is related to incarnation being irreversible.

We start-out as pre-mortal spirits - and we incarnate in order to make progress towards full divinity.

All Christians at least implicitly believe that to be resurrected - that is, to be incarnate, to die and then to be incarnated again with a perfected body - is 'better' in some vital way than simply to be 'a spirit'. That to be resurrected is a higher state than to be a spirit - otherwise why go to the bother of incarnation and death.

It also seems that there is a very general folk wisdom, spread across many religions and spiritual practises - that to die is to separate spirit from body, but that to be a spirit whose body has died is to be in some way maimed, incomplete, miserable, and indeed to be unselfed. This leads to the 'underworld' of post-mortem spirits - Hades, Sheol and the like - a world of partial and demented spirits, living in an eternal and unpleasant present.

What I take from this is that incarnation is progression, and it is also irreversible - once a spirit has had a body, the body cannot afterwards be detached from that spirit without some maiming, some irreparable damage.

Now - what this seems to mean for reincarnation is that it has to involve 'the same' person coming back. I think this is entailed, because the body would (I think) have to be remade from the surviving spirit - in something I imagine to resemble a complementary process.

In other words after death there is a maimed and incomplete spirit, and resurrection entails re-completing it with 'the same' body it had during life, but this time an immortal, perfect and pure body.

If this person was reincarnated then either they would have to return to earth with this immortal body - in which case they would be an incarnate angel rather than a resurrected human. An example would be the Moroni; who is an important human character featured in The Book of Mormon, and who then becomes the angelic agent for the rediscovery and traslation of the book by Joseph Smith.

(Note: There are also thought to be angels who are pre-incarnate or never-incarnated spirits.)

A reincarnated human would, I take it, have to be re-born to human parents - and if a post-mortem spirit was indeed reborn in this way he would need to be provided with a new body that was nonetheless in some essential way the same body he had before - not necessarily the same in appearance, but the same in some essential fashion; because otherwise he would remain maimed; and also otherwise because if he had a different body when reincarnated, then he would not be the same person somehow reborn, but someone fundamentally different.

So I can imagine that a reincarnate might arise when (for whatever reason, perhaps a premature death such as being murdered - premature in terms of what they had been incarnated to accomplish, in a spiritual sense) - would instead of being resurrected, have their spirit 're-cycled' t be born again - but this recycling would be the same person, with a body that was the same in its ultimate essential quality (even if it did not look identical).

I expect that this thing has happened, and continues to happen - but such an idea of reincarnation apparently rules out some of the attributes and things it is supposed to achieve in Eastern religions. It seems to rule out incarnation as other (non human) beings, and also the idea of reincarnation as a way of gathering very different experiences of being different kinds of person.

I think reincarnation is more of a second chance (or maybe third, fourth etc chance) to do what needs to be done - rather than a mechanism for incremental, stepwise spiritual progress. And this conviction of mine comes from my understanding of what happens to the spirit at death and resurrection.

'Wildest Place' is very well written, and certainly worth reading - however, it is also undercut by a kind of post-modern irony whereby Mitchell both takes-seriously and simultaneously brackets and mocks the idea of Pan - trying to have it both ways, which is (of course) ultimately impossible...

The final chapter of the book takes the stance that Pan, and the panic which is hallmark of his presence, is still a part of the modern world; but it likely to be found in familiar places under unfamiliar circumstances, rather than in true 'wilderness'.

This conforms to my experience earlier today. I usually get up at 05:00h, and at this time of year it is completely dark at that time. This morning, while I was drinking my coffee and reading, I heard a 'blood-curdling' noise from nearby - so I went outside ('armed' with a torch) to investigate.

The sound was coming from two or three back-gardens away, and was a bit like a goose (or more than one goose) being slowly strangled to death - except that it stopped and restarted a few times over a period of about 10 minutes. I think it very likely to have been fox cubs playing - since they make a strange noise, and we have quite a lot of them in our part of the city and they will use our back gardens for foraging and recreation - unless they are sealed-off by intact fences (which mine, currently, is - I got sick of them digging holes in my lawn).

Nonetheless, I was beginning to feel unnerved - and this was just standing in the dark some six feet away from my back door, looking up at the gibbous moon and constellations: I was beginning to get a sense of having stepped into a primal world, where I didn't really belong and was unwelcome.

Then I heard some animal crashing through the treees or shrubs at the bottom of my garden and the probably through into nearby gardens.

I should point out to US readers that there are no dangerous animals (except for humans and pet dogs) in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, or indeed in England. And any animal capable of crashing through adjacent garden trees must have been a bird, and probably just a wood pigeon (they make a heck of a noise clapping their wings together and flapping branches around).

That is what I told myself... but I couldn't really convince myself that these noises were harmless; and I felt a slowly mouting congested panic welling-up in me. This in my own back garden standing just next to the back door!

After a minute or two, I gave up the struggle with myself, and slipped back indoors, quickly bolting my door against the night and sighing with relief!

That was exactly the kind of thing JHM was talking about. I didn't believe that Pan or one of his wild and dangerous servants was really present in my garden, and threatening my life; but neither could I convince myself that there was nothing to worry about.

I had slipped back into the primal mindset of a hunter gathere keeping watch in the night around the fire on the savannah, or in a clearing in the jungle or forest - alert and tingling with readiness to fight or run.

Civilisation does not run all that deep - it does not take all that much for us to reconnect with the animated world and the pagan gods.

How do you set about discovering what has really happened in your country, or is happening, at the deepest level? A 'supersensible' level unreported in the media and unnitoced by the great majority of peopel?

One possible strategy is described by JRR Tolkien in The Notion Club Papers:

Theocracy: a form of government in which a deity is the source from which all authority derives.

1. All Christians want theocracy (properly understood).

2. Theocracy in the sense that the national life - its laws, rules and regulations, customs and habits, social practises - should be at-least compatible-with, and in practise supportive-of, Christian life.

3. The Christian life is (necessarily and always) individual, opt-in and voluntary - but it is susceptible to incentive: positive and negative.

4. So - Although Christianity cannot be enforced upon anybody (and even the attempt should not be made); and despite than any genuinely Christian society will always contain non-Christians (at least in this world) (and probably in a considerable proportion); given that there is a stark choice between either a pro- or an anti-Christian society (a steady-state of neutrality being logically- as well as practically-impossible) - All Christians may be presumed to want a theocracy.

5. Different types of Christian will, presumably, want different types of theocracy. The best known would be the divine monarchy of Byzantium or Holy Russia; or the dual system of Pope and his anointed monarch under spiritual authority; but have also been decentralised and non-episcopal and non-priestly models of theocracy such as Calvin's Geneva and other 'puritan' polities (eg. in New England up to the early 1800s) - and Brigham Young's Prophet-led Mormon republic of Deseret.

6. Many other versions of Christian theocracy are, in principle, possible. But one or another theocracy is the only viable destiny of any possible future Christian society.

Monday, 19 September 2016

If you like fantasy fiction, The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner (1963) is a must-read. It is not necessary to read the prequel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen - I didn't, when I first encountered Gomrath.

What I find most exciting about this book is that it is about the re-emergence of The Old Magic into the modern world; and what this implies:

Would it be 'a good thing' if The Old Magic came back into this world? Well, it would not be the best possible thing, for sure (we are supposed to go forward not return) - but maybe it would not be the worst thing.

It would be, essentially, turning the clock back and trying again from the perspective of human destiny - but at least it would be an acknowledgement that we had failed: which would be psychologically healthy.

Was the decline and extinction of the Roman Empire a sign of its deep spiritual malaise - should be have rejected that more decisively? It sometimes seems that the Renaissance was (overall, in net effect) a rebirth of the worst of ancient knowledge - rather than the best; a regression rather than the progression it is commonly depicted to be. That was associated with a resurgence in the High Magic such as astrology and alchemy - which seems like an error, overall and in effect.

Anyway - we can all thrill at the Old Magic - in fiction, at least; and it is never all that far away in fact.

Sunday, 18 September 2016

If or when there is to be a spiritual revival (soon) - then it will not be Christian from the get-go - even if (as it would need to) it eventually or even quickly becomes Christian; it would start-out as something not-fully-or-perfectly-Christian - and only become Christian by steps and stages.

This should be expected, and not fought-against. The difficulty, the trick, is to be able to discern the real thing of an embryonic Christian revival from the impersonations of it.

There are three aspects to the great gift of God to his children: 1. the separate life given to us out of the Creator’s own life; 2. the intelligent understanding of the significance of the qualities inherent in that life; and lastly 3. the strength and integrity to carry and sustain that life.

The more these facts are considered and realised, the more we come to realise the value of our earthly life, and the Creator’s thoughtfulness in not being present in a dominant personal form which would have prevented us knowing about and developing individual independent characteristics and identity.

Because, how could we have gathered such an important part of the gift if the strong and dominant person of the Creator had been at our side in a form which we could have recognised? We would have been merged into duplicates of his own nature if our God had done that, and then what value could we have for him as friends?

But if we are being given such a great and real gift then there must also be a risk that we will not enter into the spirit of the gift sufficiently to take it. There must be a possibility that we will wilt and fade in our spirit.

If we can have real success we must also be able to have real failure, and I think this is why we sense that there is a beautiful heroic yet tragic element in life. We must become aware of its failure as well as its success.

Only our Creator can know what is real failure, but we can share the grief which he must feel for his children that he nearly wins, but who then slip away from life and from his love.

In a nutshell, there is no such thing as 'The Right': there is only Religion (or Religious systems) or The Left.

(i.e. The Right is an incoherent concept.)

A nation is either run with a religion as the bottom line; and politics, economics, law, the military and police, education, science, health the media etc - all other human activities - being ideally and ultimately subordinated to that goal. Religion is the organising principle...

Or else a nation is run on Leftist lines with 'mortal utility' as the bottom line - that is to say: the utilitarianism of mortal life is the Leftist goal; under the assumption that nothing else exists, or matters.

In sum: A nation can be run on Religious lines (as all nations were in the past, and many still are); or else it can be Leftist - which means it pursues mortal utility

And that is The Left, in its various guises - communist, National Socialist, socialist, fascist, New Left/ Political Correctness, Democrat, Conservative, Republican, Libertarian, and all the flavours of Alt-Right/ Neo-conservative/ Neocameralist/ Dark Enlightenment or whatever.

What makes something The Left is that what is ultimately aimed-at is human psychology - e.g. maximising economic 'utility' during mortal life; and its proxy-measures such as subjective happiness, reported or inferred human flourishing, well-being, self-esteem; or proxy objective measures such as wealth/ income/ consumption. Or the inverse goal/s of minimizing pain, suffering, violence, humiliation...

Even if military glory, national pride, or racial supremacy is being pursued - these are merely version of mortal utility and therefore types of Leftism - based on a different theory about who most matters and what counts as maximum utility.

In other words all the Leftisms are types of utilitarianism in some kind of groupish abstraction - universalism, humankind, the nation, state, class, region, a sex or race, or some other unit.

The disagreements on the Left, the differences between the secular Leftisms listed above - which may be very bitter - are merely concerned with the identity of the group for which utility is to be maximised, and how best to maximise utility - that is all.

Since the only way of not being Left, is to be Religious: then we are each faced with the a choice of a Religion - with different views of what (other than mortal utility) we ought to be aiming-at. And there are, of course, huge differences in this respect between religions, and even within religions.

If you do not accept The Left, and reject its ideology; then you must put a religious goal into the place of utility.

Step back from politics - cease having it as a central interest and concern in your life. Because from where we are now, there can be no genuine improvement in politics. Better politics can only come on the other side of a spiritual revival: a revival both personal and civilisational.

Therefore, unless you already are religious, you need to embark on a spiritual quest to find your religion.

The situation seems to be that the whole of the developed world, The West, lives in a fake simulation (a 'Matrix') - mostly in the mass media but sustained by the official bureacracy, the legal system, education and so forth.

Reality is buried deep in the subjectivities of people - hardly, if ever, communicated. It seems the only way that any sense of this reality can be obtained is through the eyes.

To one who is not corrupted, the eyes are a give-away for those who have sold their souls. A normal human (not someone especially good, but just a normal person) has eyes which are a picture of their thoughts. We give ourselves away - or rather we reveal our common and shared humanity, by the eyes.

(Of course there are other ways too - but the eyes are the usual, and they are a kind of quick and sensitive shortcut.)

The corrupted ones have eyes that are blank like stones, like snakes - no matter how the face changes, no matter what is said or done, the eyes stay the same - staring, observing, gathering information for manipulation.

To any normal person, this is a horrible sight, something from which we turn with mingled horror and disgust - often with fear tinged with pity.

Much of modern fashion, technology and indeed the sexualisation of everyday life is designed to distract us from those eyes - the sunglasses, the contact lenses, the distracting hair, clothes, torso, legs, revealed flesh... They are all saying in different ways Look At This (Don't look at the eyes...)

But although we notice the blank eyes, and react with horror - we should not fear them - we never should fear; that is exactly what the snake-eyes are supposed to do - paralyse us with fear, make us submit.

Those who are themselves corrupted, the ones with the stony eyes, cannot actually read the thoughts of others - they have no empathy; all they can do is see that there are thoughts, that the person being dealt with is still a real person and therefore this needs to be dealt-with - sooner or later.

Some people try to hide the fact that they are alive and real from the snake-eyed, demon serving ones - but this cannot be done. If we learn to shiedl our eyes, so they do not 'give away' our souls we become like them - and the very act of trying to conceal our true natures from the snake-eyes begins to turn us into one of them.

I have seen this happen so many times - I mean the corruption of decent, real people into snake eyes - sometimes by fear, sometimes by greed and craving for status and success, sometime by trying to be cool or trying to avoid being mocked as a fool: always by self-deception.

Example: I meet again somebody I used to know and who I haven't seen for a while - and I can see in a moment, with a flash of dismay, the snake eyes - and I realise with a jolt they have gone over to the dark side.

People with normal eyes are good and bad, wise and stupid, likeable and loathsome - but they are at least people. The snake-eyed ones are functionally non-human, they live in the Matrix and believe it - even as they manufacture it, and that - for them - is both reality and nightmare (because their 'reality' has no bottom-line in truth, but is manipulation all-the-way-down to the nighmarish supreme entities).

Of course, somewhere buried-deep and walled-behind the unblinking, stony stare is a human soul - shrivelled, despairing and unable to help-itself because actively rejecting of help. Beyond human reach - but not beyond divine influence, if such influence would be accepted.

What should we do in a world where humans are increasingly ruled by the snaked-eyed ones? And whereso many people, even children, are themselves becoming snake-eyed: we can see the shutters closing over their souls, or their vividly expressive eyes crystallizing into glittering stones.

It is quite simple: be courageous and loving and do not conceal the fact. Including; when we are confronted with snake eyes, and spontaneously feel horror and revulsion in our souls, let it show - don't try to block it.

And take whatever consequences... which may be good; and will anyway be much less bad than the consequences of imprisoning your soul and becoming youself one of the snake eyed.

Synchronicity is not about communication - it is about relationships - it is what would be expected when we are in a relationship with reality.

We misconstrue synchronicity if we describe it from the assumption of a baseline state of reality as meaningless; acausal, random occurrences without direction or purpose; life as something which (mostly) 'just happens'.

Synchronicity is supposed to arise like an island of meaning against this sea of meaningless background: like a picture emerging from random dots, a tune emerging from 'white noise'. Synchronicity is sometimes seen as being like a 'coded communication' - an indirect attempt to communicate some piece of information to us by some arrangement of 'coincidences'.

But this understanding of synchronicity assumes that Life is nearly-all discrete, granular, autonomous and unconnected events: just 'bits' of information.

In contrast, synchronicityis 'telling' us the opposite about Life - that in reality our Life is a web of relationships between conscious entities - like a dream.

The point of synchronicity is really very simple, and does not need decoding - because it is not a informational message. Synchronicity is the sudden awareness that Life is a web of connected and pusposive relationships; and that there are many entities around us involved in these relationships - things as well as people.

Synchronicity is not information, it is the awareness that there is life and consciousness, meaning and purpose all around us and everywhere: it is a recognition that real life partakes of the quality of a dream; with the implication that there is a dreamer, a creator.

Telling a lie means being untruthful - there may be various reasons for it; but being A Liar means that a person does not even try to be truthful. It means that they are habitually dishonest. It means that the truth of their statements and behaviours is subordinated to other strategic priorities - greed, lust, power-craving...

Modern public life is full of Liars and essentially nothing but Liars. It is not that the people sometimes lie it is that truthfulness is simply not a factor in what they say or do - their orientation does not include truth. It is not that they are aiming to be truthful but are weak and set this aside too readily - it is that they are indifferent to truth as a value.

When a wise child knows that somebody is A Liar, they realise that there is no way of sifting truth from them; what A Liar says must be ignored and decisions made on what they have done, not what they say.

Politicians are Liars. It is not that they tell lies - they Are Liars - that is their identity. There is no point in listening to what they say, no point in discussing it - a statement may be true, completely false, or any combination of the two. A statement may be technically accurate, yet creating the opposite impression - everything they say is misleading.

Public Officials are Liars: the mass media are Liars. The leadership of Education, Science, Law, the Military and Police, and major religions are Liars.

Institutions are Liars - all modern institutions that have power, wealth and official authority are now Liars - whether in government, NGOs, charities, colleges, corporations.

The whole modern Establishment are Liars: solidly, systematically, habitually - lying is enforced and rewarded and institutionalised - it is deep, it is solid, it is a positive value.

We should not listen to what Liars say - especially not to what they say they Will Do. We cannot make any sense out of it - it may mean anything or nothing but we have no way of knowing.

We need to make up our own minds about things on the basis of our own criteria - but for Heaven's sake we should not pay attention to debating or analysing their statements.

Liars have no right to expect to be believed about anything. It is outrageous that they do! When (as often) A Liar asks 'Are you calling me A Liar' there can be only two acceptable responses: Say Yes or Say Nothing.

But we should never reassure A Liar that he is believed about anything.

The fact is, if we are wise we will not believe Liars, and nothing they can do or say will make us believe them. The harder they try to make us believe them, the more we should resist believing them - or indeed disbelieving them. What they say means nothing.

Only experience can change our views - if A Liar repents and change his behaviours over a long time despite inexpedient outcomes - then and only then will they cease to be A Liar and earn the right to be believed.

Monday, 12 September 2016

My interest in this matter is spiritual, not political; this is not
about an election, it is about the potential for mass spiritual awakening
triggered by a recognition of the scale and scope of falsehood being
perpetrated in official public discourse; and the potential for many,
many people very suddenly (and unexpectedly) to make a decision either
to stay inside or to move outside The Matrix of dishonesty and delusion.

But this is a critical time in the history of The West. Either we will decide to continue in the present direction to extinction and self-damnation; or to step off the down-escalator and start climbing back upwards.

Whatever happens in the next few hours or days, and whether or not she gets elected in name; it is now clear that Hillary Clinton will never be President of the United States in any functional sense.

My probable inference is, and has been for a while:

1. HRC has moderately-advanced and swiftly-progressing Parkinson's disease - this is a degenerative neurological disorder with many potential effects including inability to initiate movements (Akinesia or freezing), tremor and rigidity/ stiffness; including a high prevalence of dementia of the Lewy Body type (including episodes of delirium with hallucinations and delusions - although the baseline Parkinsonian state is blunted emotions and a mask-like inexpressive face).

An Akinesia/ freezing episode looks like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzZl9j580tM

Note how the freeze episode is triggered by the need to step-off a kerb - a classic Parkinsonian symptom of Akinesia - and the subject does not 'stumble' or trip on the kerb, nor did she 'fall' (that is the mass media telling you what you are supposed to see) - but is standing frozen, unable to initiate the movements needed to step-off the kerb, and stiffly resisting moving forwards, having to be dragged bodily and off-balance.

2. She is being treated with L-dopa - but this drug many significant side effects, including dystonic movement disorders; 'manic' types of hyper-emotionality; alternating ('On-Off') with episodes of freezing - i.e. being unable to step forward (see the later parts of the movie 'Awakenings' for these problems.)

3. She is being kept-going (kept moving, essentially) for brief public appearances, probably with Apomorphine injections. The injection is an temporary emergency 'rescue' treatment - to be used when someone freezes (or used in advance to prevent a freeze). The injection of Apomorphine works in about ten minutes but lasts less than an hour - and there are other significant side effects including psychotic features (hallucinations and delusions).

(Note: One of HBC's aides apparently carries an injector pen of the type used for these injections.

4. Pneumonia? Whether or not HBC currently has 'pneumonia' is of little relative importance. It may be just today's lie; but if true, pneumonia is probably due to Parkinsonian (or treatment-triggered) problems swallowing, coughing, choking - and inhaling something which has caused an infection.

Personally, I suspect that pneumonia if real is trivial; since HRC was up and about and smiling for a photo-opportunity within a 1.5 hours of being frozen and helplessly carried away from the 9/11 ceremony. Pneumonia severe enough to cause collapse would take days to improve - but bouncing back in a few hours is consistent with On-Off syndrome of freezing alternating with active Parkinsonism treated with L-dopa; or a temporary boost (just long enough for photos) from an Apomorphine shot.

*

The election result is the least of the factors at work now.

What is now known (cannot, indeed, be avoided) is that the US public and the world have been lied-to on an epic scale and for a very long time by the US Establishment in collusion with the Mass Media who have attempted to get-elected someone with a serious, advanced and degenerative neurological disease who is grossly incapable of doing any kind of job.

(At the rate the disease is apparently progressing; within days, weeks or at most months HRC is quite likely to be in a high intensity care facility - and her life expectancy is likely to be less than the first term of office.)

How did this happen? In a world so completely dominated by the secular Left; this was a self-inflected blow. There has been some extraordinary combination of self-deception and probably coercion at work to get to this point: lies piled upon lies; threats piled upon threats...

Whatever - now the Democrats find themselves holding the wolf by the ears: they surely cannot hold on to the lies for two months, but they are terrified of what will happen if they let-go and start to tell the truth...

*

But that may not be the whole story. We are always living (know it or not) in a state of supernatural spiritual warfare - God and the angels versus Satan and his demons - and to some extent, it seems likely that this moment has been prepared by the powers of Good - so that there will be a time of choice...

A time when people will be brought to the point of acknowledging - albeit for a moment - the gulf between public discourse and reality; acknowledging that the Establishment is not just incompetent and selfish and short-termist; but has an actively-malign strategic agenda to attack, subvert, corrupt and invert The Good.

Lying on this scale, involving so many leaders, institutions and their minions, and about such a crucial matter is of world-historical significance. The question is whether this significance hits home and gets acknowledged; and having been acknowledged leads to restorative action and the blood, sweat, toil and tears which must ensue; or whether the whole thing is cynically and despairingly swept-away in the torrent of distractions from the propaganda, news and entertainment cycle.

*

To step outside 'The Matrix' of Media-reality into the clarity of Real-reality is itself merely a first step - beyond that lie further choices of an essentially religious nature.

The ultimate decision is to recognise (or falsely deny) the absolute necessity of religion; and eventually to choose between religions.

But a first step is needed.

**

Note: This moment is not primarily about those who already opposed Hillary Clinton, but those sincere and serious Democrats who had her candidacy dishonestly foisted-upon them. They will now be brought to recognise that they have been systematically lied-to by a united front of people and institutions whom they trusted and regarded as well-intentioned; treated with extreme disdain, manipulated to serve some covert agenda, exploited cynically for malign ends. These are the kind of people - some at a very high level of status, responsibility, wealth and power - who will now face a crux.

I suspect meditation is not a thing which is supposed to have a 'standard technique' (therefore exactly the kind of thing which is typical of alienated modern consciousness which we are aiming to heal).

Furthermore, the language used to discuss such matters seems to be extremely difficult to understand.

However, two things I have found useful are clarity and brooding - meditation as a state characterised by clarity and brooding.

Clarity is tricky to explain. I find that most of the time I exist in a cloudy kind of state, which is partly sleepy, often headachey, mostly automatic, mostly passive - dictated by either sensations or memories. But by thinking in terms of clarity, I can sometimes dissolve the clouds and come-to-awareness of myself and my actual situation, moment-by-moment.

It doesn't last very long (seconds or minutes) but everything seems more real - and it seems to be a positive state.

Brooding is a concept that I contrast with 'concentration'. With meditation we need to take control pursue purpose (as contrasted with passively drifting through life being acted-upon) - but any kind of 'concentration' seems to revert to normal modern reductionist, positivist, scientistic thinking - like doing an exam.

By brooding, I aim to stay on the same theme (perhaps by note-taking, or reading short passages), but in a slower and looser way than 'concentrating' on it; I am circling round-and-round the topic, examining the theme from many angles - somewhat like the moon orbiting earth; rather than concentrating attention like a concave mirror focusing sunlight on a tiny aspect of reality.

If I can get myself into a state characterised by a clarity of brooding, and hold it for a while, then I seem to get my best insights and understandings - although nothing is guaranteed, and more often than not there aren't any specially remarkable consequences.

But since clarity of brooding is a pleasant concious state to be-in; it is rewarding in and of itself.

But very few other local people noticed this gorgeous display - they were walking with heads down (on their mobile phones, mostly) - trudging or rushing to work.

Most evenings (weather permitting) I spend some time outside looking at the sky. Despite the appalling viewing conditions of light pollution from living in the middle of a big city, and the horizons obscured by buildings, I have seen some remarkable things - and sometimes these are inexplicable and I could find no other reports of them.

A couple of years ago I saw what may have been a 'fireball' (a type of meteorite) - a red, apparently burning, red ball going parallel to the horizon from right to left, making a roaring noise, and lasting several seconds - maybe ten? This was extremely obvious and amazing, but apparently nobody else noticed of found it worth commenting about.

A couple of days ago I took my wife outside to see the 'summer triangle' made by the stars Deneb, Altair and Vega - but we were distracted by 'searchlight' patterns crossing the sky - which we could make no sense of, since they had multiple origins. The effect was very strange, but again I could not identify it and heard nothing more.

My sense is that modern people do not look at the skies, perhaps even avoid looking at the skies, and are incurious about what they may see there. All kinds of remarkable things may be happening - including the 'normal' beauties such as the moon, Venus, the constellations - on display up there - of which modern people are utterly unaware.

And for someone who believes in an animated universe, it all means something - even if we aren't able to summarise or articulate that meaning...

Responding to a blog post at William Wildblood's Meeting the Masters I wrote:

"Remember that when Jesus wanted to commune with God more fully he
withdrew from the crowds and towns and went into the deserts and
mountains, and this remains true today, if not always literally, then
certainly symbolically and psychologically."

The point is well
made - if even Jesus needed to withdraw from the distractions of other
people, noise, busyness... then how much more do we?

And yet how
few people do this? (maybe a couple of weeks a year of holiday... but
then the holiday often involves two or three days of miserable
travelling, and may itself be filled with frantic activity and excessive
intoxication!)

In almost everybody's life, there is ample
possibility of withdrawal, every day; If it is made a priority. Which it
should be, because withdrawal is a necessity, not a luxury.

A great
strength of the Christian way is that it understands God as both outside
of us and within us (because we are God's actual children, hence divine
- albeit embryonically).

According to our current challenges
and circumstances, we can therefore seek and find God both within and
without; as a feeling and as a relationship.

And our assurance
is that the necessary help will always be given if asked-for,
listened-to and accepted (remembering that sometimes it is better for us
not to get help but to do our own best to overcome our own difficulties
- indeed this is the normal and usual thing); and that true help is
ultimately directed at our eternal well-being, not necessarily or often
what makes us happiest in this mortal life).

But, I have considerable reservations - varying in strength - about the bulk of Garner's work. This reaches the maximum for the book under review - a novel called Boneland of 2012 (pp 149 - which retailed for £17, which runs at more than a pound for ten pages - steep!).

This seems to be Garner's final book - in the sense that he was in his seventies when he wrote it, and in the sense that the book tries to include references (some explicit and others coded) to all of his previous fiction, and to aspects of his autobiography (which can be found in the worth-reading, albeit very irritating, essay collection The voice that Thunders, 1997).

Boneland is supposed to be, in some sense, the final part of a projected trilogy which began with The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath - albeit in my view Gomrath ends superbly, perfectly, with - indeed - one of the best endings of any novel ever!

In one sense, Boneland is indeed a third part of the series, because it (sort of) contains the child characters of Colin and Susan at a later stage in their lives. In another - more realistic - sense this is not the end of a trilogy - because this is hardly a novel at all and written for adults not children.

Indeed, at 149 pages and not much written on each page; Boneland is actually a novella not a novel; and despite its terse-to-the-point-of-incomprehensibility form, Boneland is actually not a tightly written novella, but rather a padded-out short story - since it is full of linguistic repetitions, sprawling doggerel and song lyrics, and a feeling of dramatic redundancy and slackness of plotting.

On the positive side, I did read the whole book (in about three or four hours, not hurrying - and I am a slow reader) - so it had enough to keep me going to the end. But having struggled throughout to understand what was going on...

(Since he wrote Red Shift in 1973, ostensibly for teens, Garner has been deliberately telegrammic; and the novels and stories consist mainly of short sentences of unattributed and unamplified dialogue - often with untranslated dialect words - so it is very hard to know who is speaking, what is happening, and what they mean. Garner - just about - gets away with it in Red Shift, given a reader's willingness to put in extra research and multiple re-readings it has raw power; but not since. In other words, post Owl Service, Garner is deliberately hard work - presumably on the basis that he believes it makes the writing deeper and more poetic if you cut out all 'inessential' words, and then a few more... This places later Garner as a very late example of the Imagist and experimental tradition of Ezra Pound and Basil Bunting.)

And having spent the whole novel setting up the final encounter...

When the end actually comes: it is lame.

In a nutshell, Boneland amounts to one of those 'clever' kid's stories which end "And then he woke up and it had all been a dream!"

As the final line of Boneland puts it: "It is a true story, said the other. It is a true Dream. Sleep now."

This means the book is not fantasy; and not only not-fantasy but actually anti-fantasy because it retrospectively re-frames and falsifies both the Weirdstone and Gomrath as happening only in Colin's 'dreams' And then claiming this makes them 'true' stories - presumably on the basis that these dreams effect his healing and individuation, or personal growth.

What Boneland actually is then - is a novel of psychotherapy, of Jungian analysis. The book accounts the inner story of a self-cure achieved via the ultimate self confronting autonomous archetypes of the collective unconscious - which present themselves as a full-blown psychosis of hallucinations and delusions (these psychotic phenomena including the previous two novels).

Thus: Colin finally, climactically (i.e. on page 147) meets his twin sister Susan and they embrace - she appears as a blank shadow; and he asks "Who are you?" to which she replies "You." And when 'Meg' (the psychiatrist who also, apparently, does not really exist - despite taking-up most of the middle half of the novella) afterwards asks where Susan was; Colin replies "Here".

This is a question that nearly all Christians are confronted-with over the years (unless they are capable of deceiving themselves abut their own cumulative goodness!): if they are living as Cristians, then why aren't they becoming better and better people?

The answer (which I mostly got from reading William Arkle) is that Life is not designed to make us better people, but instead life should be seen as a kind of ideal School or College that aims to provide us with experiences from which we can learn.

Life is at root about experience, and learning from experience.

The benefits of this learning are primarily intended for our lives after death in the immortal resurrected Life to come; the benefits of Life are not (in essence) required for this temporary mortal incarnated life.

I'm certainly not saying that this mortal life is un-important, but trying to say in what ways this life is mainly important: the idea is that it is important in terms of learning knowledge by experience - not in terms of improving us in this life.

Life very obviously seems to be set up in this way. Life provides experiences which are challenges, sometimes repeated experiences of the same kind of challenges; and our job it to learn from these experiences (given that learning is very difficult, which is why that repetition is so often needed in order that genuine learning can occur.

(All good colleges know this: to build a skill (which is a practical form of knowledge) requires drill, multiple repetitions, frequent practice.)

If life is like an ideal form of college, then we should expect the same kind of results; and not expect what a college cannot provide.

For example, studying theology at college does not make someone a better Christian; but it can and should make them more knowledgeable about what a Christian actually is, what a Christian ought to do, the history of Christianity and so forth.

Conversely - some (many?) of the best Christians, the most advanced in Christianity; are 'naturally' so - naturally good, virtuous people; yet their understanding of Christianity may be defective and partial. Indeed the best Christians - qua Christian - are sometimes children, simple-minded and ignorant people.

It seems that the Christian life is not very effective at making better Christians! But that seems to be part of the plan. The Christian life may be very effective at doing what it is meant to do; and even more so when we recognise that our specific personal needs differ - so that Life may be bringing us to confront (and overcome) challenges of the kind we need most - and these challenges may be repeated, because that is the way (often the only way) we will learn fully to overcome that type of challenge.

By such an understanding, combined with our knowledge that this world was created by our loving Father for his children's benefit; we can infer the purpose of our mortal world and can also make a reasonable guess at our own needs, hence our weaknesses.

We can - to some extent and given the assumptions as premises - infer function from results.

For example, in my life I have for some decades experienced almost continuous problems and challenges related to illnesses of various types. If it is assumed that my life is, at some deep level, not a random accident but instead 'the life I need' (because if not, then God did not do a good job - which possibility is ruled-out by my assumptions); then this may mean that I am supposed to be learning how to live in the context of such experiences of illness.

Such experiences may not make me a better person in this mortal life - indeed, they do not seem to be having that effect! - but nonetheless these experiences may provide me with practical, lived knowledge ('skills') which I do need for my post-mortal existence, and which mortal life uniquely provides.

In a more general way - the basic nature of mortal life may be doing something similar. Unless God-the-creator is supposed to be incompetent or un-loving- it must be that actual human Life provides what we need (overall).

So, we should be able to infer what we need from what a 'Christian Life' actually, typically, achieves - on the basis that what is achieved will (in a world well-designed by a loving God) tend to match-up with what is required; and what is required reflects what God most wants for us to learn during mortal incarnate Life.

Note: The above scheme is made possible by the effectuality of repentance - which was made possible through the work of Christ. What this means is that we can live a life of multiple, repeated failures to attain The Good, yet so long as these failures are repented (and the ideal proper behaviour acknowledged) we will still attain salvation.

"What is needed, ever more desperately, is to move forwards into Final Participation - but this must (according to both Steiner and Barfield) be 1: Within the context of a truly Christ-centred Christianity (no matter how 'heretical' or unorthodox - Christianity must be Christ centred as its primary reality); 2: Done with full consciousness, explicitly, deliberately, from the modern Consciousness Soul - but a Consciousness Soul grown, expanded, fully communicating, aware and engaged with all the rest of reality."

I watched all three of the Matrix movies a few weeks ago, and enjoyed them overall (although the fights went on much too long!).

I can see why they were taken as emblematic of modern society in terms of depicting the succesful, systemic manipulation of 'reality'.

But I found the basic idea of humans being used by ruling computers as 'batteries' unconvincing, and also not as bad as reality - not least because the computer rulers are not actively evil but merely machines working to a programme.

The real life Matrix - the false, manipulative reality of modernity by The Establishment - is ultimately run by actively evil demonic powers (evil being the subversion, corruption and inversion of Good).

Their aim for humans is much worse than physical exploitation for energy; their motivations are a mixture of short-term sadistic delight at suffering; and the long-term strategy of inverting the Good in all its aspects - creating a false reality actively embraced; such that humans will eventually choose to believe virtue is sin, sin virtue; beauty is ugly and vice versa; truth is an illusion, actively rejected; and the delusions of the Matrix are the real reality.

In sum, the real-life Matrix conspiracy aims at micro-control of all humans for the harming of humans - not for the benefit of of The Establishment: which situation is far more horrible than the movies.

And the stakes in the real world are much more significant than they are in The Matrix - because in the real world, death is not the end and the stakes are eternal.

It seems there is a powerful destiny shaping events towards a time of choice in the modernised West - a benign destiny from the point of view of those who recognise that a large majority of the Western population are already in a state of despair, nihilism and spiritual death, and further 'progress' in the same direction will lead to the situation becoming irrevocable at the mass level.

According to almost all easily available evidence, the Establishment (the demonic conspiracy who are behind the global elite strategy of spiritual corruption and inversion by means of their ideology secular Leftism - spearheaded by the sexual revolution) are getting close to a situation of closure; when they have complete control over all significant perceptual inputs from the mass media, official propaganda, the educational system laws and regulations etc.

This would enable them to achieve self-chosen mass damnation by the dual strategy of the modern metaphysics that only sensory information is real, combined with control of all sensory information.

But for the evil global conspiracy - things are not going according to plan...

Brexit was the first major sign that the Establishment are in a state of conflict and chaos, and have failed to brainwash the masses to anything like the extent they (and I) had supposed had already happened. This led to several days of unguarded hysterical venting and increasingly open disagreement within the elites, which situation continues.

It seems ever clearer that the elite leadership are operating on the basis of grossly false information, according to a kind of 'wishful thinking of evil' (familiar from the gloating monologues of comic and movie villains!) - whereby they have come to believe their own spin and lies - designed to mislead the masses: and are now fighting imaginary enemies and ignoring the real sources of danger to their victory.

(Indeed, in a sense, the elites are physically incapable of knowing the real threats to their hegemony, since these threats are operating in domains which they cannot perceive or influence, and the reality of which they deny.)

How else to explain the almost incredible doubling-down on the US Presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, when she is very clearly and obviously in moderately-advanced state of some kind of degenerative neurological disease (probably Parkinsonism, being treated with L-dopa and psychostimulants?)

The global conspirators imagine that this can be concealed from the US electorate by ramping-up the mass media filtering and control and propaganda (and medication...) - but they are objectively wrong, it is too late already; yet they cannot perceive it!

Even given the appeal that HRC would be the first purposively-evil Presidential candidate - who would be actively destructive of Good; and that Donald Trump is a perfectly reasonable Plan B candidate for the Establishment (his strategy being to carry on the same path of terminal spiritual decline, but a bit more slowly) - the Establishment are oblivious to the deeper reality of the emerging situation - and the unpredictable but potentially massive consequences of enforcing such a profound and obvious fraud.

There is certainly no guarantee that this will end well, and how it ends may be determined outwith the mainstream political domain (i.e. not necessarily by recorded votes or via official power groups) - but there is a coming window of opportunity; and a guarantee that many people will be awakening to the reality of their basic situation and the scope and depth of deception in which they are currently complicit.

What happens then, is up to them.

Note: If you recall the big 'Mayan Calendar' fuss about the winter solstice of 2012 supposedly being the start of a new spiritual era - and then to all appearances nothing at all happened - then my interpretation is that something of the kind anticipated in 2012 was and is brewing-up; but that many people were misled by 'numerology' into giving it a specific and pre-determined date and outcome, which takes no account of human agency.